use of English

Penstemmon I think on the BBC they said there were 'under 30' still alive.

I suppose that could mean 1 or 29.
Lackadaisical reporting
As in the original OP I suppose!!

4-5 of them on "Bomber Boys" showing on BBC 1 now.
They are crew, not all pilots

It was mentioned on the early am news that there would be a 90 year year old ex WW2 pilot who would be flying as Alea said, as a passenger.

Just seen the elderly pilots talking on the news:95 yrs ..30 still alive! Wow!

I don't really understand the OP.

I was under the impression that most were either dead or old So, if you accept that some are not dead, but old, why would they not be able to attend the event? You then mention 'the gaff' further down the thread. What gaff? From your account of what was said, it is merely that Prince Harry will be there with some of the WW2 pilots. Nothing you have said (nor, I assume, the reporter) indicates that the WW2 pilots will actually by piloting the planes.

Maybe I'm just being picky. Picky about what? As you have entitled this thread 'Use of English', are you being picky about how the description of the event was framed? From your account I can't see anything wrong with it.

I think they were saying thatthere are still about 39 surviving. I saw an interview with a 97 year old who was still very compos mentis.

I think there at at least a dozen still able to attend various celebrations being held this year.
There was a service earlier in the year, followed by a lunch at the RAF Club where all the surviving pilots posed for a formal photo with P Phillip, who became totally hacked off with the photographer faffing about and told him so in no uncertain terms. Obviously wanted to get on with the serious business of sitting down to lunch.

I'm watching the Channel 4 coverage of the fly past today as I write, its a brilliant site to see them all flying. .... and not interrupted by bloomin' Corbyn and the TUC conference.

No I had just done some quick calculations because i thought I had made a mistake but if a pilot was 25 at the end of the war it is not impossible to think a 95 year old could not be there, could it?

When you think the average age of the pilots in the war was 21 and many younger, what brave young men they were.

One is going up in a Spitfire, there may be more there. I'm not sure about 'many' though.
Very brave old veterans.

"dense" not "de nose"(?) also meant to say when we say we are "flying" e.g to New York we don't mean "piloting the aircraft" do we, so if he said they were "flying" it's excusable.

Am I missing something? There still a very few Battle of Britain pilots alive, they would be in their (late?) nineties, so why should they not be there? So maybe being d nose, but I am not getting the point of OP. (I know I will really when someone points it out to me!)

1066 probably, given the caibre of some of the presenters these days??

Probably when the world was still only in black and white!

Wonder when she thought WWII happened!

Yes the gaff was only on CBBC. Hope they are flying over us to.

I understood them to say that one WW2 Spitfire pilot would fly in one of the planes, not that he would be flying anything . We are near to Northolt RAF base and a lone Spitfire was flying around the Aerodrome yesterday what a wonderful sound they made...
I'm hoping we'll see some more of them today when the flypast is over..